Altman's very British crime and passion

Robert Altman never met Agatha Christie, but soon he will. Last spring, I stood beside Altman in an English stately home, typical of so many a Christie crime.

Alan Bates's butler bustled in, bossing Richard E. Grant and Ryan Phillippe in their footmen's livery. The day before, Michael Gambon had sat as the head of a table with crystal, silver and candelabra. They hadn't yet shot the scene of the body in the library. If Miss Marple had been standing behind the TV monitors used by Altman to weave the intricate coming and going among the 'upstairs, downstairs' country house members in 1932, she would have felt at home. The question on everyone's lips is 'will Altman?'

Gosford Park is the first film he's shot in England. 'I know I'm treading on a social minefield,' he admitted. 'It's Ten Little Indians meets La R?gle du jeu,' he added, eager to return to the solid ground of cinema fiction. Julian Fellowes's original screenplay was inspired by Christie and Renoir; one the mistress of classic English crimes among the idle classes, the other an ironic scrutineer of the weakness of France's pre-war ruling class. Odd company for Altman, maker of M*A*S*H, McCabe & Mrs Miller, Nashville and Short Cuts, just to name his all-American oeuvre. Yet one glance at Gosford Park's ensemble cast and it's not so odd. Altman is a director who loves crowded casts. Here, he has corralled a herd of Equity pedigrees which includes Maggie Smith, Charles Dance, Emily Watson, Stephen Fry, Derek Jacobi - and (Bob Balaban, Jeremy Northam, Natasha Wightman, Kristen Scott-Thomas, Tom Hollander and Alan Bates. You could hardly get them all on a dance card.

Fellowes hopes his bespoke script, tailored to Altman's imperative - the maximum number of people that the £12.5 million budget can afford - will be more accommodating. Meantime, he and Altman are holding it close to their shirt fronts. Is it a detective story? I ask Fellowes. 'Not quite.' A social comedy? 'In a way.' A murder mystery? 'Yes and no - someone is murdered, twice over...' Altman interrupts, fearing his screenwriter too garrulous, 'Just let's say it reflects my normal scepticism about human nature.' Then, relenting, he adds, 'The film of mine it's nearest to in spirit is A Wedding' - his misanthropic high comedy about snooty nouveaux-riches Americans, which made room for an amazing 48 characters. 'Grisly and gala,' was how it was described by The New York Times's critic, while a doctor in the film, surveying the social wreckage at the end, murmurs, 'It's like the last days of Hitler.' Surely Altman won't turn the English aristocracy of the inter-war period into that sort of doomsday? 'Well, it's deliberately set just before Hitler gained power,' he says, maybe not wanting to invite association with the film The Remains Of The Day, which was set among the fascist upper class of pre-war England.

Cautious not to spill any more beans, Altman turned his attention back to the TV monitors, using headset microphones to direct the actors at long range, since the servant's pantry is too small to accommodate him, his cast and the cameras used to catch his players at all angles. I remember he and Hitchcock both trained as engineers before the cinema abducted them. Their not quite abandoned concern with calculating stress in the construction of scenes is evident in Altman's joy at his set-ups. Social class, period trappings or English locations are ultimately irrelevant - they're simply the components of his art. As he prepares to murmur, 'Action,' he turns to me warily. 'Now, don't go giving the plot away. Just OK to say the butler doesn't do it.'